Saltie, street fairs, steel, strawberries, asparagus, green garlic. Planning for pickles and preserving. Handmade bicycles, lilacs. Pie and peonies. And an invitation to escape to the Catskills. New superadobe stories and these sandy punks swinging by their knees from geodesic domes selling screenprints and copies of Buckminster Fuller.
Posts Tagged ‘myself’
Laundry List
In various on May 20, 2010 at 5:43 pmKees aren’t creaky. Sciatica seems gone. Insomnia? I can’t sleep when there’s a party at Sweet Revenge but I think that is normal. Vertigo? No relapses.
I don’t know if I can credit Iyengar (Probably Cory gets some credit) or a job that fits better (probably) or having control over my physical work environment (gee … I wonder) but I’m not complaining.
Going Postal
In flaneurie, learning, misc on April 21, 2010 at 12:18 amI have a project. I don’t want to tell you what it is, but I don’t want to get your hopes up, either. It is modest. And it makes me really happy. If you’d like to participate, send me your mailing address. I’d love for you to play along.
San Francisco, New Years Day
In various on December 10, 2009 at 7:22 pmIt is a tradition, in these parts, to congregate at the home of one Frances Pauline for black eyed peas, collard greens and corn bread on New Years Day. Luck, it is supposed to bring you.
I won’t be around these parts though. I’ll be Out West. In San Francisco. So I’m going to make do, by making my own beans.
If you’re going to be in the bay area and want to join me, please do get in touch! I know I’ll miss people otherwise.
Switch (an idealab cross post)
In various on October 1, 2009 at 2:53 pmOur latest (and last, for now) news game, Switch, is live. It is no Energyville but we think it is pretty awesome. Not only is it live, the source code and installation instructions are already available.
With gadgets guzzling evermore energy, New York City faces a looming energy gap. New Yorkers will have to cut back on our electric use or start generating a lot more power. Our game lets people explore the options that are on the table, along with a few that aren’t. Should the city ban air conditioning? Harness the tides? Go nuclear? Warning: the game is addictive.
A World of Opportunities
In Stating the Obvious, learning, linux on August 28, 2009 at 3:47 pmI’ve been kicking around the right way to announce a thing I announced to my colleagues a week ago. That thing being that I’m leaving Gotham Gazette. The reasons are both simple and complex, but the simplest is that the publication really, really needs someone to evaluate web analytics tools not someone to tackle the big, fun, challenging question of why New Yorkers aren’t more interested in public policy. Well, I think they do need the latter, but fundamental scarcity of resources means that the former is winning out.
These are good questions, though. The civic engagement ones, I mean. Is it because we think policy is impenetrable and our legislators are all bought? Is it because we don’t notice that land use decisions matter until developers are breaking ground on a sky rise across the street? That we think the game is won already? I’m not sure, but I think changing the way people think about local policy is a really interesting part of our project here.
Read the rest of this entry »
PDF -> XML -> Calc
In various on April 15, 2009 at 10:43 pmForget for a moment that I’m trying to play like I’m more than a tech. Or recall Joanne this morning in the rain in the garden after Lucia and I collected coconut shells to mark out an area to plant her onions in, “so funny, computers seem like the last thing I’d imagine you working on. You’re someone who should be working outside! I can’t imagine you not working with plants!”
If only she knew.
So I have a PDF. PDFedit will convert it to a pretty crappy XML document. A round of non-greedy vim searches:
:%s:<font .\{-}>::g
:%s:</font>::g
:%s: bbox=”.\{-}”::g
Followed by some attention to the numbers:
:%s:
period :. :g
:%s:comma :,:g
:%s:zero :0:g
:%s:one :8:g
:%s:two :2:g
:%s:three :3:g
:%s:four :4:g
:%s:five :5:g
:%s:six :6:g
:%s:seven :7:g
:%s:eight :8:g
:%s:nine :9:g
(and a bonus to anyone who can tell me how I totally borked my data with the series above …) got me a really, really simple XML file of “lines” and “words”. Read the rest of this entry »
Whining Works and Waffles
In various on February 4, 2009 at 12:12 amOne: kid brother is trying to password protect photos of our nephew. Our nephew. Kid brother did not bear spawn. But he’s struggling with htaccess and authentication. Among other things that make it kind of difficult (besides just starting from scratch being difficult) he’s stuck with FTP access. So here is the story, loosely.
Let’s say you have a directory. We’ll call it “hamish” just because that is a nice word. Yiddish, I think, for “cozy” or “familiar.” So you have a folder called /srv/apache2/example.com/hamish/ and you want to password protect it. You need a password file. You can make it in a text editor, call it .htpasswd and stick a line in it like:
waffle:N.KP5MOATfaew
If you know what a waffle is, or was, species-wise, you’ll be able to work with me. Otherwise, just figure someone’s user name is waffle and their password is not maple syrup. Unless it is. You could just use that line for now, or you can generate your own using the htpasswd command or using a random web gui. The latter method does present certain security issues, but it is convenient. The other file you’re going to need is the .htaccess file, and assuming your .htpasswd looks like mine and is called .htpasswd and lives in /srv/apache2/example.com/hamish/ then your .htaccess will look about like this:
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Not Just Anyone Can See This”
AuthUserFile /srv/apache2/example.com/hamish/.htpasswd
Require user waffle
Upload those two files and you’re good to go. Anyone who knows from waffle will be able to log in. It is true that you can do a lot, possibly even a shitton, with htaccess, but the easiest place to start is basic authentication.
Two: whining. Which goes about like so: last night, we were through debating the relative merits of naming an unnamed collaborative project Palante Tech (we decided against usurping Palante just yet) and we were almost through debating Flickr and Facebook and privacy and I said something about Gallery and how it frustrates me that I can’t get webdav to work. And dkg said something like “well, if you’re using F-Stop you can just export directly to Gallery. Why not do it that way?” I was just whining. I didn’t expect a solution. But sure enough, if you enable the remote module in Gallery 2 (and probably Galleries one and three as well) you can use f-spot to tag and name and order your photos and then export them to your gallery. I don’t really have many photos that aren’t of my wedding, so I haven’t uploaded any yet, but I’m definitely done storing my own photos on Flickr as of yesterday. Meantime, I’m uploading even more photos of Vermont fields.
Maybe I’ll eventually get rid of that dagged WARNING: block core.NavigationLinks doesn't exist. error, too.
If I whine about tags and tagging in WordPress will someone fix that for me, too? I want to choose from my existing tags. Grump.
Cracker, Go Home
In various on October 12, 2008 at 4:12 pmLast night, we went with a bunch of Merry’s apprentices to see Danny Hoch’s new show in a high school auditorium in Bushwick. An auditorium decorated with murals that tell the story of the mankind on earth, in which very fair skinned naked people are blessed by a winged angel (“The Dawn of Civilization”) and then bestowed the flame (“The Gift of Fire”). And with fire the story ends.
Before I start, just so you know, I’m struggling with the fact that last year’s RAT was really inspiring and rejuvenating for me but without something to offer I can’t see myself going again.
So I saw a play finally. Some live theater. Saw it with a couple of teenagers (both named Hector) whose entire previous experience with live theater consisted of a trip to Lincoln Center to see the Nutcracker (shorter Hector) and “we saw this play once at school” (larger Hector). Read the rest of this entry »
Need a Housesitter?
In various on July 30, 2008 at 2:48 pmTate says we have terrible luck with real estate. I suspect that we just want more than we can afford so we push the edges and wind up getting burned.
Either way, we had a contract, we had a mortgage. We had a lawyer trying to schedule a closing and some seller saying “we need to close on Monday.” And then on Tuesday, our lawyer called. They don’t want to sell after all. Or they do, but with some side shenanigans that you could call legal gray areas or you could call fraud or you could just call going out on a limb for a stranger. Whatever you call it, whenever someone says “you won’t get in trouble, no one has to know” that should be a sign. Especially when your lawyer says that it is probably a bad idea. It is a funny kind of extortion. They know we’re invested in the place and want to get this done. Maybe no one would ever find out. But beyond the fact that we want this place we don’t gain anything but anxiety and the thrill of knowing we’ve perpetrated a grand fraud. See what I mean? Bad idea.
So we have a choice. Sue them, or walk away. Walking away means starting over, hitting the streets again. A new inspector (cha-ching), a new lawyer (cha-ching), a new mortgage application (cha-ching). Another round of visiting the house ten times to figure out just how bad the mold in the basement is. But suing them means dragging this out. Paying a lot more to a lawyer (cha-cha-cha-cha-ching), tightening the screws on some people who are basically destitute already. Maybe it means that we never get the house because they pull some trump card out of their hat (maybe they aren’t bluffing about the licensed contractor they owe a bazillion dollars to who is going to put a lien on the building any day now). Or maybe it means that in six months or a year (or, as our lawyer has warned us, two years) a court will say “okay people, enough of this.” There are a lot more details (obviously) and if you want them you have to buy me a beer.
A few weeks ago, though, when this was all going swimmingly and we had every reason to believe we’d own the place by now (every reason) I told my friend P. that he could stay with us for a while. Now we don’t have space for him, especially not with my parents coming out here to help us pack. I don’t really know what they’ll be doing out here now, either.
He’s trying to get settled in New York, he isn’t working yet, not consistently enough to pay rent. And he was counting on us, so I’d really like to hook him up. So if you need someone to feed your cats for a week or two, maybe walk your dog. Or just water your plants and kind of make the place look occupied, let me know. He’s a good guy.
Also, since what I’ve learned from this whole experience is that even the nicest woman can turn out to be a conniving liar and a cheat, you could also restore a wee bit of my own faith in humanity here. I mean, there are people who will do you a favor just because they’re nice and you need a place to stay for a few weeks, right?
Meet Me At The
In various on July 16, 2008 at 1:04 pm1) We do not own it yet. We believe. We have absolute faith. But we do not own. Tomorrow a new appraisal, hopefully a closing date settled. Everything seems to hang on these threads, teeny tiny little threads. This is a damn nerve wracking time for the banking industry to be going to hell in a handbasket. Later, when we’re depending on rent to make ends meet, that will also not be a good time for the economy to go to hell in a handbasket.
2) Contrary to rumors to the contrary, we’re sticking around this weekend. Thus, I’m hoping to make it to the Radical Reference benefit to see Freaks and Geeks. And I’ll definitely be making a stop at Michelle’s stoop sale:
This SUNDAY, JULY 20th, I’m having a big STOOP SALE. I’ll be getting rid of years of stuff:
Of course, lots of BOOKS, Clothes and costumery (including some WIGS and HATS), An almost new A/C
Nearly all my CDs (now that I’ve uploaded them all…) and some LPs.>>>And much more!< <<
There will also be a sizable FREE BOX and after 2pm, you can come by and fill a shopping bag with what remains from the sale for FIVE DOLLARS.I’ll be on the stoop all day, so even if you don’t want to shop, I encourage you to come by and hang out, maybe listen to some ukulele, maybe have a beer.
Afterwards, there’s a fair chance I’ll be heading to the Golem show in Prospect Park -
123 Garfield Place, betwixt 5th and 6th Avenues, Park Slope (R to Union St., then walk 2.5 blocks south to Garfield, take a left, and up the hill 2 blocks.; 2/3 to Bergen St., then 10 short blocks south on 6th Avenue
F to 4th Avenue, then walk up to 5th Avenue and take a left, then 10 blocks north to Garfield)
I need more books so I might try to stop by early-like. Soon as I’m done with the market, say.
And you? What’s on your weekend plate?
Apple sauce and some nice red beets.
In various on April 21, 2008 at 1:06 amOn the train, somewhere in Rhode Island, looking out the window.
Tea with smokehouse almonds, Tribe Called Quest.
I remembered that I don’t think it is a coincidence that I rarely notice contentment while I’m in front of my computer. Which is why my tweets are so surly, I’m thinking. I don’t actually grumble all the time. Swear it.
Last weekend when Ross (not Bender) was interviewing me for his thesis (which makes for a minimum of four theses in which I do appear; what to make of that, I do not know. Either I, myself, am seminal for sure, or maybe academia really is a boatload of bs navel gazing. One or the other.) we had a whole discussion of the term “technologist.” As in “are you a technologist?” (no, not if you’re asking me.) and one thing I pointed out was that I do have a laptop and a cellphone sure. But N is the one with a blackberry, ipaq, desktop, ipod, camera. He’s got the gadgets. I don’t have gadgets, I have shell accounts and command lines.
But about my earlier contentment: I was computing. I kind of left that off. I was sitting there with my laptop monkeying around with a big heap of data (we’re launching another game in a few weeks). Maybe it is just that when you’re off line (I’ve heard rumors of amtrak wifi but I’ve never picked up a useable signal) you have to look out the window sometimes.
Oh, and well done.
And, PS. I’m still writing on the Idea Lab sometimes. Go comment on my post. Makes me look good.
The Popular Kids
In various on February 19, 2008 at 4:23 amOne thing about me is this: I always wanted to be popular, which is probably why I spent so much time sitting around with my friends on the back lawn talking trash about the popular kids. So I write this blog about Postfix and sometimes Moby Dick and I’ve always been kind of jealous of all the people out there getting tagged. I always wanted for someone to tag me.
Now I have to think of people to tag, but I’m pretty sure that almost zero of my actual friends (as opposed to people I don’t know whose blogs I read from time to time) actually have real blogs where they can do something unprofessional like play tag. Maggie is the kind of stand-out exception that proves the rule. Scott and Jack both I’d rather have a beer with than tag in a meme. I haven’t seen either of them in ages. You can decide whether or not I just tagged you.
There are a few people out there who I can’t really surprise with much. Since Dubin is one of them, I’m having a hard time coming up with six surprises. The rules (oh! another thing: I hate doing things in order. I think I picked that up from Gordon Lightfoot with whom I spent a lot of time playing surrealist games and arguing about conformity and the nature of desire.) don’t say they have to be surprises though:
1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) Post the rules.
3) Share six non-important things / habits / quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people.
5) Make sure the people you tagged KNOW you tagged them by commenting that you did.
I can spend hours looking at a total stranger’s snapshots just wondering about their lives.
I seriously hate it when people mix up their articles and conjunctions. It burns my eyes.
A variation on a secret I’ve told before. Lately I’ve been reading food blogs. The home decor blogs were starting to get me down. I love me an afternoon of rearranging furniture (we can tack that one to the mundane list: I really like to rearrange the furniture) but as soon as you start talking about furniture, America’s obsession with buying many things, especially from Ikea and DWR, starts to become frightening and I start to wonder why I wonder why our society is coming apart at the seams. Some of my best friends love Ikea (and would probably love DWR it were really within reach), which only makes it worse. I start to wonder if I’m just becoming shrill.
I start a lot of things that I never finish.
I don’t follow directions very well.
I’m usually right.
Did I pass? I forget.
Ladies, All the Ladies
In various on February 18, 2008 at 3:11 pmLater, I will take up the meme. Promise.
First though … last night, WNYC was running a new segment on PS1′s show on the history of feminist art and I kept thinking I must not have missed a lot of breaking news while I was off in the woods. This morning, they’re still running the segment, except that this time I noticed they’re saying (maybe they haven’t been saying all along, but they did just say) that this is the first such retrospective, which reminded me, in the middle of trying to decide what to include in my response to the meme, of those years just after I’d moved to New York, when the world was a place that made me weak in the knees. Reminded me of visiting Dubin in DC where she’d just moved into a sublet that came with a copy of the Re/Search Volume 13 on Angry Women, which also made me weak in the knees. I was thinking, too, about how in those years I was always making babies cry and killing houseplants. Which secretly leads me back to realizing I’d like to go see the Wack! show, even though I know that I went to a pretty comprehensive retrospective of feminist performance art (okay, so it was mostly performance and a few other genres were excluded) which means this isn’t the very first such review.
You want to come?
Escape from New York
In various on February 18, 2008 at 4:15 amThe Ashram was a little funky, and I’m not sure I’d go there without Ana and Foca to back me up … I can’t say that and then link to them, can I? … especially since my efforts to find any details about the rumored eucalyptus sauna came to naught. I’d link to the part on their website where the same was promised, but then I’d have to link to them and they’d catch me saying bad things about how no one seemed really happy. I’m used to blissed out yogis. I’m not used to whole dining rooms full of people who seem kind of put out to be sharing the room with you. And that was before we stayed up all night dancing and building human pyramids so it can’t be that they already knew we were going to keep them up all night. (Hold up: I was trying to sleep, too.) However, it was less than 5 miles from Harriman Station on the Port Jervis line, which qualifies it for bicycle escape status, even if I took a cab from the train on Friday, myself.
I’m still looking for low key places to stay that are with in reach of both trees and the train.
I’m also (new this week) looking for ways to get our asses to Martha’s Vineyard this summer. Sumner (of the gorgeous rings–funny how you can forget a thing you wear every day until someone complements it and you remember that it is beautiful) invited us to visit but last summer we were through planning anything. So this summer we want to go see him and chill and ride our bikes and people keep telling me that we’d have to fly to the vineyard, which is crazy talk. Or drive (also. crazy talk.) I know (from Robert Moses, who knew) that if you don’t want the masses to descend, en masse, upon your idyllic retreat, you shouldn’t allow mass transit to approach, but there has to be a way for two hardy cyclists to make the journey with neither an auto nor a security line with no bag of peanuts at the other side. Right?
Seems like there are ferries from North Kingstown (RI), New Bedford (where they read Moby Dick aloud, so maybe we could stop there?), Hyannis, Woods Hole and sometimes Montauk. I’ve heard stories of the Montauk ferry, they all seem to revolve around retching overboard, a thing I’ve never done and could live without, truth be told. The Rhode Island ferry purports to be just 15 miles from Amtrak, which is a trek, but not impossible. Can we do better?
Homecoming
In various on December 21, 2007 at 12:52 amOn Christmas Eve. Way earlier than anyone thought.
And a good thing, too, because we are, one and all, sick of this. Sick of hospitals and of looking around at all of the horrible ways in which it could be worse, sick of explaining what happened (I am, anyway. And my mother says she is.) Sick of trying to think of ways to make an institution a little less institutional. Sick of all the parts that aren’t anyone’s business and the questions I can’t actually answer like “How is your mother doing?” (She is doing sick of this, is how she is doing. She is totally over this and this isn’t really over yet. She is also doing fine because what remains is not really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of big deals.) or “Is there anything I can do?” (Not really, no.)
Later we’ll have new things to be sick of, but since I live 3000 miles away in real life, I won’t be around to get sick of the bed in the living room and having to navigate life in a wheelchair for months and knowing that, in the grand scheme of things, it could be worse.
It could. This? It isn’t that bad. It is shit and it sucks and it has drained us, but it has nothing on traumatic brain injury with a dose of [redacted]. It has nothing on a great many things that can go horribly wrong in life. Which is probably why we’re all so tired of talking about it.
The Garbage Game
In various on November 14, 2007 at 5:41 pmI played The Gotham Gazette Garbage Game and sent 1,897,871 tons of refuse across 290,226 miles.
reBlogging the Idea Lab
In various on November 6, 2007 at 2:43 pmCheck it out and comment if you’d like. Michelle Murrain made some good points privately about the importance of backing up a requirement like that (like what? go read it.) with real support resources and not just dumping it on people.
Go read it. Maybe later I’ll get it together to say something about the IAS conference, theory, software freedom and anarchists. Later. I will say, ever so very briefly, that it was a pleasant surprise to discover that a lot of people had read the Organic Internet.
(And yes, I realize I didn’t reblog the post. You should still read it, and if you like it say so. Also if you don’t. )
Testing a Bio
In various on October 9, 2007 at 9:47 pmThoughts? I have a couple of conferences coming up; I always think my bio is cheesy. All bios are cheesy.
Amanda is the Technical Director of Gotham Gazette, a news and policy website in New York City, and a member of the steering committee of the Non-profit Open Source Initiative. She occasionally writes about software freedom and the role of proprietary software in movement-building organizations. Through the Welfare Law Center’s LINC project she spent three years working closely with grassroots economic justice organizations that wanted help making better use of information and technology tools, and collaborated with a group of fellow New Yorkers to develop a content management system that facilitated much of the organizing of protests and actions around the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. Amanda is part of the InterActivist Network an activist technology infrastructure and skills sharing project housed at ABC no Rio. She’s secretly more interested in greywater and urban ecological sustainability than in internet technology.
in better days
In various on September 4, 2007 at 12:59 pmFlickr is agonizingly slow lately. For some reason I suspect it dislikes me and me alone. Still, from Onion, a lazy Saturday:
and then from Tarikh, an action shot, and other photos from our road trip through the Hudson Valley:
I’m still waiting for photos of a midnight picnic, dancing under a fountain, j’ouvert.
Better than Martha Peach?
In various on April 26, 2007 at 7:52 pm
I bought my first track bike in 1999 or 2000 or so, at the Trexlertown Swap meet. It is a thing of beauty, but I’ve never been able to find out much about its history. The Internet knows nothing of the Orero. (What’s this got to do with Martha Peach, you ask? It is about the miracle of the internets, is all. )
Today, though, I got a really interesting email (via Taliah) from Jose Ramon Orero, who says he is the son of Ramon Orero, who made custom bicycles, first in Spain and later in Argentina and then finally on to the US. Jose thinks my bike was made in the US, sometime between 1970 and 1972.
Check it out (all is edited for clarity):
My father’s whole live was dedicated to custom made frames and bicycles. He and my mother (both deceased now) moved from Spain to Argentina in 1949 and then onto the US, he was devoted to frame making. My father came to the US in 1968, the rest of the family followed in 1970.
The bicycle Amanda has was probably built in 1970/72, in the US–I can tell by the Orero Decal on the lower pipe. I know it is an original because the name is stamped on the sides of the seatpost.
I hope I’m not boring you with all these details, but my father’s work and the people he made bicycles for hold a very special place in my heart and memory.
Are you kidding? There is nothing online about Orero bikes. I’ve been wondering about Orero for years. I’m not the only one, either. Tron doesn’t say much, but Brian wants to know about his Orero, Elvis is looking for anyone who’s ever heard of Orero. Mike Fabian’s got a brief mention, via Sheldon Brown, of Ramon Orero building frames in an old Bowling Alley for Paris Sports. That is it though. No one seems to know more.
More from Jose (I’m paraphrasing again) …
My father cared a lot about bikes and the people he made them for. He wasn’t corporate-inclined, he was more interested in building bikes for the people he met than in fame and big corporations. In his own way, my father was an artist at heart. What he created, from measuring the rider, positioning the rider on the bike, hand drawing the frame, he created with his own hands. The lugs were all hand-made, hacksawed and hand filed (no power grinder). Only the painting was left to someone else.
I believe your bicycle was built in Beleville, NJ in my father’s bicycle shop tha theh owned with a partner, Cycleland Sports. Cycleland opened in late 1970 or early 1971 and closed its doors in about 1982. After closing Cycleland he worked out of a bicycle shop in Ridgefield Park, NJ.
Thank you!
Jose Ramon Orero
[tags]bicycle, myself[/tags]
about
In on June 5, 2006 at 2:51 pmAmanda Hickman, New York City
Amanda is the Director of Technology atGotham Gazette and is on the steering committee of the Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (NOSI). She was recently the Senior Circuit Rider at the LINC Project of the Welfare Law Center where she provided technology assistance and training to low-income grassroots groups in the US working on anti-poverty issues. Previously she taught “Digital Activism”; an undergraduate course on using the internet as an organizing tool at NYU’s Gallatin School.
She is also an active local organizer who (always in collaboration with others) founded Greene Acres Community Garden and runs a public compost drop-off at the Fort Greene Farmer’s Market. Other recent projects include:
- InterActivist Project (at ABC no Rio)
- CounterConvention.org and Lighting Bug software development project
- I am New York City
